Conventional search engines receive a search query from a user and execute a search against a global index. Such conventional search engines typically use one or more conventional methods for performing a search. For example, one known method, described in an article entitled “The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Search Engine,” by Sergey Brin and Lawrence Page, assigns a degree of importance to a document, such as a web page, based on the link structure of the web. The search results are often presented in a list format, including article identifiers and brief snippets about the documents in a web page that can be resized.
A user may also have access to other information stored on the user's local machine or on other storage media accessible via a network that is relevant to a user. Typically, a user enters an explicit search that includes keywords and that is executed against a global or local index (As used herein, a “keyword” or “keywords” is defined broadly to mean words, sequences of words, acronyms or other characters, including spaces, based upon which a search may be performed).